Render as well as sculpt with this intricate 3-D modeler.
Rating: Very Good
AN UNPARALLELED SELECTION of modeling tools has made form*Z one of the best 3-D modelers for the Mac, but earlier versions of the program had only limited rendering capabilities -- a real disappointment in a $1,995 program. form*Z users who wanted to apply realistic surfaces to their 3-D designs had to shell out even more money for a rendering program, such as Ray Dream Designer, Strata StudioPro, or Electric Image's ElectricImage. Now form*Z finally has its own capable rendering engine, which can render full texture maps, using flat, Phong, or ray-tracing rendering algorithms.
Cubes of Color
One of the first hints that form*Z now has a built-in renderer is the new Surface Styles palette, which replaces the Colors palette. The Surface Styles palette has colored 3-D cubes that represent textures as well as colors. To add a texture to the palette, you double-click on one of the cubes. Using pop-up menus in the dialog box, you can select the surface color, reflection, transparency, and bump map for your texture and can define its size. If you'd rather use a predefined texture, you can select one of the included procedural textures or you can import a bitmapped texture you've created in another program. Although the texture-designing controls of form*Z are powerful, they don't include specular maps or glow maps.
To apply a texture to an object, you use the Color tool, just as you did with earlier versions of form*Z. However, to position the texture, you have to trek through several dialog boxes, and you have to know how you want to apply the texture in order to select the right tool. For instance, if you want to control the mapping type, orientation, scaling, and rotation of your texture, you have to use the Texture Map tool; if you want to apply a texture as a decal, you use the Decal tool. It can take a while to find out where all the texture tools you need are located. Unfortunately, you generally have to place and tweak textures by using numerical coordinates; few of these tools have interactive controls.
And There Was Light
To complement the new rendering features, form*Z has a comprehensive set of lighting controls. The new Lights palette lets you create an unlimited number of distant, point, cone, and natural lights. In the Light Parameters dialog box, you can set a wide variety of parameters for each light. For instance, using sliding bars, you can define the falloff lines -- specifically the inner and outer circles -- for a cone light and define how soft- or hard-edged you want your shadows. You can position the light by defining its location on the 3-D axis, using numbers, or you can position it interactively with your mouse. You can also ask form*Z to show the light source in your final rendering. We particularly liked the ability to direct a light to a specific point on your object, called the Center of Interest. You'll find this lighting feature only in form*Z and in Electric Image's ElectricImage rendering/animation program.
Overall, we liked the quality of form*Z's renderings. If you use full ray tracing, the best rendering option available, you can successfully get subtle reflections and soft shadows, although the texture maps themselves are sometimes slightly blurry.
The wide variety of 3-D modeling tools in form*Z ranges from typical tools for taking 2-D images into the third dimension, such as the Lathe tool and the Extrusion tool, as well as more-esoteric, complicated tools for free-form sculpting of the object mesh. Each one of form*Z's modeling tools has its own broad subset of functions. For instance, not only can the Lathe tool rotate an outline along an axis in order to create a 3-D shape but it can also spiral the outline around the lathe, using parameters you set to control the degree of rotation.
The 3-D-geometric-shape tools in form*Z create solid objects, perfect for sculpting, especially if you take advantage of form*Z's Boolean operations, which let you use one object to subtract volume from or add it to another. Besides having tools for the more standard Boolean operations, form*Z also has Boolean Cut and Stitch tools. With these, you can cut apart a hollow surface object and then stitch the pieces to another object or use them to slice and carve.
Unfortunately, form*Z's selection of 2-D shapes and drawing tools isn't as broad as its set of 3-D functions. If you want to use complicated 2-D shapes and profiles in form*Z, you're probably better off creating your 2-D shapes in a dedicated drawing program and then importing them into form*Z in either Adobe Illustrator or PICT format.
You'll have to spend a good deal of time with form*Z's extensive tutorial and experiment with the program for several hours before you can really use it, because it has some unusual interface conventions. For instance, if you want to apply an operation to an object, you either have to select the menu-bar command or select the tool first and then click on the object. If you want to select the object or objects first, you have to use form*Z's Pick tool; you can't simply click on an object to select it.
Overall, we were pleased with form*Z's speed, both for modeling and for rendering. Nevertheless, we recommend running it in native mode on a PowerPC machine that has at least 16 MB of RAM -- more if you're creating large or complex models.
The Bottom Line
If you're serious about 3-D design on the Mac, you must consider form*Z. Even though its interface can be confusing at times, form*Z has modeling power -- especially now that it has its own, built-in rendering engine -- that just isn't available with any other 3-D modeler or renderer for the Mac. / Ben Long
The sophisticated 3-D-sculpting tools in form*Z are now complemented by a full-featured rendering engine.
You can create and define textures and surfaces in form*Z 2.7.5 with the same advanced degree of control you have for creating and sculpting 3-D objects.
form*Z is the only 3-D modeler that lets you twist and spiral outlines as well as revolve them around a lathe.
